A Land Apart: The Southwest and the Nation in the Twentieth Century by Flannery Burke (review)

In the acknowledgments section of this bold and sweeping synthesis of the Southwest in the twentieth century, Flannery Burke recounts a conversation with the esteemed late historian David Weber. After Burke sketched out the contours of the project that became A Land Apart, Weber told her that she was proposing a "big book." After she clarified that it would "only" focus on the twentieth century, while foregrounding cultural history, Weber said again, "that's a big book" (307).

This is indeed a big book, and one that comes around at a time when historians need to remember the larger context of case studies, micro-histories, and fine-grained analyses of singular events. But one could go a step further when assessing Burke's impressive contribution and note that not since David Lavender's epic The Southwest, published in 1980 (University of New Mexico Press), has a historian tried to grapple with the complexities and nuances of this unique part of the United States on such a grand scale. In Burke's hands, the reader is introduced to expatriates from the Northeast in search of "authenticity;" hipster counter-culture types going "back to the land"; leaders from pueblos and reservations; Chicano/a activists; labor union leaders; and scientists building the atomic bomb. We meet tourists and promotors of tourism, immigrants and nativists, farmers and advocates of migrant workers' rights, environmentalists, and engineers. While other scholars have written about these groups independently and in greater detail, Burke's accomplishment is her ability to weave together so many diverging stories into a coherent narrative that captivates the reader and offers insightful commentary and analysis.

Burke's synthesis stands in contrast to popular arguments about the Southwest and its people that are organized around key themes, concepts, and eras. She notes that common perceptions of the Southwest hinge on a belief that it is both "out of place" and "out of time," observing that few regions have been so thoroughly constructed by outsiders and their misperceptions of the people and the land. Burke's corrective to common tropes about the Southwest orbits around captivating narratives about Hispanos, Mexican Americans, and Chicanos; Native Americans; and other marginalized groups living complex lives and engaging with the modern nation in ways that reflect their agency and agendas. In addition to her focus on racial identities, Burke centers stories about humans' relationships with the land—particularly the arid landscape—to reveal the common dangers associated with a lack of water. The importance of this point cannot be overstated, and Burke does a masterful job of using aridity as a narrative trope and a structural constraint on development in the Southwest. In addition, she foregrounds questions of belonging as people of the region have, through deep cultural ties going back millennia as well as through others who have only recently made themselves at home. Her analysis of the tensions between Native stories of emergence from the land compared to tourists and expatriates fleeing urban industrial life reveal her knowledge of the region's history as well as the talent with which she treats her subjects.

In addition to the aforementioned, Burke explains how the Cold War affected the Southwest, narrates the relevance of civil rights movements for people in New Mexico and Arizona, and explains how nuclear testing continues to shape the region. As with every book, the reader may hope to see something more; in this case, Burke could have traded some emphasis on northern New Mexico for the fringes of the region. And yet, the central arguments and themes of the book remain salient. Despite this observation, A Land Apart is indeed a "big book" worthy of everyone's attention.